Walk into the twilight
by Mrs Fruitcake
Summary: In pursuit of the secret of Artemis and Actaeon, Alex drags Gene on a road-trip up north. But the Manc lion is back on his own patch. GALEX. Follows on from In Paradise. Please read and review.
1. Chapter 1

**This story is the fifth in a series of six connected stories about A2A. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you've read the others, which are in order; London Fields, Playing with the Big Boys, And if I Start a Commotion, In Paradise.**

_**I**_

"Here you go, and here." Speakers piped Mull of Kintyre through the menswear department of Kendals. _And here, and here_. Onto the two white shirts he piled five pairs of boxer shorts, two cotton singlets, socks and a tie.

"A tie?!" Alex protested as the menswear assistant looked on patient disdain. "You can surely wear the one you've got on now for a few days. I don't think your 'man-stink' has travelled as far as your tie yet."

"Right then." His eyes remained on her as he picked a random tie-clip from the selection on the counter and threw it onto the pile of clothes. Anything else to say?

"Don't stop there. If I have to pay for this lot, I think you should buy something a bit more appropriate for a holiday." Alex glanced around the racks. Not that there was much choice. Compared to the clothing stores she'd been to down in London recently, it didn't appear that Manchester had embraced early 1980s fashion yet. Most of the men out and about on the streets that morning had favoured navy blazers and grey slacks.

Mull of Kintyre segued daintily into a pan-piped First Noel, and she stopped in front of a rack of brown leather jackets. Just maybe she could persuade him into a polo neck ... and god, what about a pair of jeans? Perhaps Hunt was hiding a nice arse beneath those tailored pants.

He'd dragged her into Kendals pretty much as soon as they arrived in Manchester. It was about 10.30 am now and they'd spent less than ten minutes here … the payback for her having stolen his car and kidnapped him. She hadn't allowed him to go back to his flat and pack in case he double-crossed her and left her on a London street so they'd driven straight out of the city. Only when they were near switching onto the M6 would she agree to stop so he could take over the driving.

And he'd climbed into the driver's seat, lighting a cigarette and informing her sourly that she would be buy him a replacement wardrobe once they reached Manchester. His mood hadn't lightened for the whole trip up through the night. Mile after mile of road markings that grew mesmerizing if you stared at them, of ghostly fields intermittently frosted or sodden, and houses crammed together off the motorway huddling for comfort. And they'd been silent the whole time.

She couldn't help it. Her mind was fizzing. She had a set time and a set place to meet her mysterious informant and a whole day to pass here in Manchester before they rendezvoused at the Throstle, a pub and inn near a village in the northern part of the Forest of Bowland. Wherever that was. Now that she didn't have the map in front her, Alex couldn't quite remember where the Forest of Bowland was in relation to Manchester. It was somewhere she'd never been and sounded vaguely Robin Hood.

She couldn't contain her own glee and excitement. She was nearer – she felt it, she knew it – to the secret of her presence here. Nearer than she'd ever been.

"There you go." Alex held a camel-coloured polo-neck and pair of dark indigo jeans against his chest. She knew she was provoking, but nothing else had snapped Hunt out of his arsehole mindset. Somehow she had assumed that he would just leap at the chance of this adventure with her, maybe even if he did try to hide it. Away from Ray and Chris, and the reminders of the awful past month. But no … the hand that gripped her wrist and pushed the clothes away from his chest advised not.

"If you wanted Ray along, you should have stolen his car instead." Hunt exchanged a filthy look with the assistant and stalked over to the rail of overcoats. "But you just reminded me that as well as some socks and kecks, you owe me a new coat." It was not so many weeks ago that his old black coat had been shredded in that ugly fight in the Stepney warehouse, where he'd come close to having his head stamped in by Marc Michaux.

Of course he couldn't quite blame Drake for that situation, but on this harsh, white-light winter morning in his hometown he wasn't going to let her off the hook for anything.

"Well at least get yourself something **different**," Alex remonstrated as he tried on a long black woollen coat identical to his old one. He looked briefly in the mirror. Collar up, face in that sneer that was almost the natural resting expression of his face. Yes, same bastard.

"I'll change my look when you change yours," Hunt said and threw the coat on the counter. It was the quickest sale ever for the bored young assistant in Kendals menswear.

"This is going to bounce." Alex pushed a curl from her eye, as she began writing out a cheque.

* * *

She'd just spent what probably amounted to two weeks' salary on his clothes without a protest, she'd bought him coffee and a bun in a grotty, unfamiliar coffee shop and was presently enduring his continuing silence across the table. He looked down at the new coat – he'd cut the tags off straight away, momentarily guilty that he had deliberately chosen the most expensive one on the rack. Legs stuck straight out, just daring some dim teen to step over him, he sucked on another cigarette as light rain began to fall on the street outside.

And now he couldn't fucking stand it. It probably wasn't her fault. It was Manchester – he felt so edgy being back here, where he'd made so many mistakes, _been a bad boy over and over again. _And hadn't he just? Whether it was his teenage antics or as a copper, he could name any street and tell a story that should have been buried in the past. Somehow, with Alex here doing her Dorothy routine – click my shoes and I'll be back with my daughter – it made it worse.

Outside this street, Hunt glanced up and down, seeing past the women in their rain-coats pushing prams and jerking toddlers along on their leads. There were at least five night clubs and a couple of knocking shops. _And I've disgraced myself in all of them._

It wasn't like he was ashamed of his past – who wanted to reminisce about twenty years of arriving home to fish dinners with the wife every night? As if Drake suspected anything less of him than bleary fights over strippers and drunken three am stumbles back to his house anyway. It was one of the things about her that annoyed him now as she drank her cup of tea.

She thought she knew him, thought she had him wrapped around her little finger, so very evident from that trick with the car keys back in her flat. He'd beckoned her for a kiss and she'd lightly clung to him for the briefest time just so she could get the keys from his jacket pocket. And forced him to drive her up here, and now was waiting there with that beautiful face expecting. Expecting that whatever his purpose had been for coming home to Manchester could just be dropped at her whim.

_Not even my ex bloody wife thought she could carry on like Drake does_, he thought, the change jingling in his pocket as he tapped his boot heel on the coffee shop linoleum. _Fuck it. _Hunt made up his mind then, and he stubbed the cigarette into the ashtray on the table as he stood up. Crammed the rest of the bun into his mouth in a deliberately uncouth display.

"This is where we part ways, Bolly," not giving her time to reply before stepping out into the rain.

Alex caught up with him on the street as he neared the Quattro. "Gene, what do you mean?"

Hunt looked at her sideways as he bumped the boot and handed over her suitcase and bag. "Meaning I have business here to get on with, and since I've delivered you up here for your business, which isn't my business, this is where we part ways." In a stagey way he swept an arm down the street. "Around the corner there are two car rental places. Don't go to the first one, it's run by a thieving Welsh bastard. Don't let them rent you a van either, because I've seen your driving and you ain't up to it. Get yourself a nice lady car, a mini."

Alex was still open-mouthed as he pulled away from the footpath and the Quattro disappeared around the corner. "Thanks very bloody much." The rain had plastered her hair to her face and she put her up her hand to stop the first tear of mascara running down her cheek.

* * *

"Are you aware of what your son has just been telling me?" Justin Marbury asked Gilbert, beckoning him over to his office door. On this early New Year's Eve afternoon the floor was tomb-quiet again, and Royce Gilbert could be seen thumping down the corridor away from them in his Wellingtons.

"Royce has been talking to you?" Gilbert frowned.

"Yes, I was just sitting in my office wondering where our new colleague Detective Inspector Drake had got to, and then your son comes in and starts telling me about how she has been encouraging him to use the computer labs in your wife's university department to decode State documents. Top-secret State documents evidently." Marbury leant against the doorframe and crossed his arms. "I'm not blaming Royce of course, but Gilbert, I am suggesting you find somewhere else for your son to spend his after-school time from now on." He ignored the slight redness spreading across Gilbert's forehead, nose and cheeks. "Don't worry. I didn't let it rest there. I've just been on the phone this minute to Assistant Commissioner Vanderzee to let him know that this little experiment with dumping DI Drake into our laps has ended. Short conversation. 'You can have her back' pretty much said it all. Well, as soon as she is back from … wherever."

Gilbert was looking at the floor and said absently, "I'm not sure it was really her fault, Justin. Royce got it into his..."

"Vanderzee was practically gnashing his teeth over the phone," Marbury carried through Gilbert's doubts. "Hopefully he'll see this is the last time he can palm off the CID trimmings onto Forensics."


	2. Chapter 2

**The Sexual Healing lyrics by Marvin Gaye do not belong to me.**

_**II**_

It was odd to have a father, only in his mid-sixties, living in an old people's home. One of Manchester's lesser homes at that, full of halls with peeling cream paint revealing layers of peeling green and mauve paint beneath that. But then his dad had spent forty years drinking hard liquor and busting his family's faces when the pubs closed. It was time to rest.

Hunt could just picture how another year might have advanced his old man's decrepitude further. Walking down those halls with that smell of sick and toilet cleaner, he wondered why the theme from High Noon played in his head when he was near him?

Knocking briefly on the door to Jim Hunt's flat, he wasn't surprised to find his dad in the same recliner chair by a small table, a stack of newspapers nearby. At least they weren't stick mags, he thought, taking off his coat and finding his own chair. Last Christmas's reminiscences had been more bitter than normal – what with Hunt having just moved down to London, his dad had savoured memories such as taking down a suitcase full of his son's long-treasured comics and trading them at the local book swap for a well-thumbed through pile of Big Jugs.

"Don't get up then." He went into the kitchenette and put the jug on the stove, as his dad watched his every move in silence.

"Your ex-wife were here the other day," Jim Hunt said finally as his son handed him a cup of tea and plopped a milk bottle down on the table.

"I bet you two had a good old yarn." Hunt had once had to punch his old man out cold for threatening her. It had been a good two years before he'd spoken to the old bastard again, but when he did come around to the family house they had carried on normally … just like this.

"Well at least it's about family with her. She brought me a steak and kidney pie. She's a good girl." Jim Hunt pulled the fag packet from his shirt pocket and struck a match off the side of the table. Lighting his own cigarette, Hunt pictured his family or the dessicated remains of it – just a bewildered grandmother over in Barnsley, one-armed Uncle Ricky who had a serious accident practically every year.

Fuck it. Hunt knew that this old folks' home was dry, but going through the three rooms of his father's flat would be like an alcoholic Easter Egg hunt. Now from memory … Hunt went into the bedroom to his old man's hanky drawers. Beneath the stacks of kerchiefs, neatly folded by the nurses, was a mostly empty bottle of Johnny Walker.

"Cheers." He poured the remainder into his cup of coffee, ignoring the protests, and downed it quickly. Already he felt that same claustrophobia. For two hours, he had sat neat his mother's grave at the cemetery, and even in the light drizzle he could have sat longer. But here, after two minutes it was like a glimpse into the hours in a prison cell.

"I want to hear all about Lon-don." The way Jim Hunt's tongue split the name into two distinct, tainted syllables ... Hunt made that whistling sigh through his teeth in response.

"Do you want me to drop you down the working man's then?" he replied evenly. At least down there, they could drink side by side and not have to talk. Or they could hide their mutual hatred by talking to the jolly nice drunks at the bar until it was closing time. But weirdly his father stayed put, hadn't instantly grabbed his jacket.

Used. All day he had been used. By Drake, and now by his unloved father until he could confirm to himself that he had done his duty to his mother for another year, and get back to London.

But it came clearly to Hunt as he put down the cup into the sink in the kitchenette and even rinsed the coffee stain ring from its edge. Drake had been using him, sure. _But at least I get to stare at her tits while she's doing it. _It brought a grim smile.

* * *

"Skip, it's called the Throstle. That's all I know."

"Well I rang Manchester Police and they said they thought it must be the pub in Hornby. That's up in the North of Bowland, Guv. Have you got a map? You should probably buy one."

"Maps are for those orienteering Marys. Just tell me what road it's on."

He could hear Viv sigh at the end of the line. "Have you got a pen and paper, sir?"

"Hang a minute." He felt in his pockets. "What is a throstle, anyway?"

"A thrush." Silence. "A bird."

"I knew you'd know. Right, give it to me."

Viv read out the directions, his finger following the route up to Lancaster and the A683. "Hornby should be not too far along the 683. Are you visiting relatives?"

Viv looked up, the receiver in the crook of his shoulder as Assistant Commissioner Vanderzee walked past the front desk. Vanderzee was walking slowly, his hat tucked under his arm. Walking so slowly it was odd, almost in slow motion.

Viv had been going to ask the Guv if he was up in the North with Drake. CID had been discussing it all day after Luigi had run over the road, with a hundred quid's change for the Guv. "I tol him it was too much, but Signore Hunt was in a hurry. I think he worried the Signorina Drake gon to crash his car."

Looks had been exchanged then – Ray's a deep frown – and Viv found himself holding Vanderzee's look as he said goodbye to Hunt and put down the receiver.

* * *

He'd half expected her to be still standing there on the street where he'd left her, her white jacket dripping with raindrops. But no, she'd obviously done her typical Drake thing – cursed him out silently and gone on down to the car rental shop.

Fer god's sake, she hadn't gone to the shop he'd recommended – did she ever listen to a word he said?

"How's business, Daffydd?" he'd asked the thieving Welshman who owned the North-West Best Rentals and was that minute standing out on the street next to a couple of his rent-a-dents, still grinning at the pleasure of having fixed up Drake with his rustiest piece of shit.

Driving to the North out of Manchester, Hunt squinted at the hurriedly scribbled directions, had to reverse back down several lonely roads slick with the afternoon's rain when he overshot a turning.

Cursed himself out too when he thought about why he hadn't just left that bloody Artemis file in the vault at Edgehampton. Hiding it around his office and flat had just been a lark. But typically Drake had got herself involved, increasing the seriousness into such a predicament that he now couldn't fathom what they were into – a string of people dead in horrible accidents, spooks messing up his flat, strange men calling out of the blue...

As he grew nearer to Lancaster, and the muddy sky deepened into night, he was half-surprised not to have come across Drake broken down by the side of the road. Passing Lancaster to the East A683 route, he drove with one hand, smoked with his other, dwelling on that vault at Edgehampton.

That vault was the origination of all that had followed. He had stolen the Artemis file, but more acutely what had passed between them in the flickering light had brought him to this. The vulnerability in her face, her voice breaking, some kind of intense feeling that had grown up in him before he could control it. He couldn't fathom it either.

_I can't fucking help myself_, he thought.

* * *

The Throstle Inn sat on the 683 on the edge of Hornby – a Victorian pub with hanging baskets of flowers hanging under its slate roof, and a large car park filling fast. The rain had stopped just in the past hour and the air had a freshness as Hunt jerked the Quattro to a halt right outside the pub's glowing windows. Alex sat at a table by the window directly in front of his headlights and Hunt kept them on her as he picked his cigarette packet from the passenger seat.

"Miss me?" He sat down opposite her. She'd been here for hours already. "It's New Year's Eve. If this bloke turns up at seven pm like he's supposed to, how's he supposed to recognise you? Did you tell him you'd be the one with the visible bra strap?"

Maybe she hadn't thought through that detail. "What, do you think he here's already?" She glanced around. Yes, actually the pub was already pretty crowded here at 6.30. "Like that man there?" She nodded to a bull-necked bloke in an anorak at the bar.

"I doubt that one could read the pub menu, let alone clip a newspaper and print your bloody name on an envelope to send it to you."

Oh, give me a break_, _she thought._ Just stop shouting at me for one night. _

"Now, I'm not one to play into Northern man stereotypes, but hanging flower baskets 'n all, this place is a little on the shitty side."

Hmmm, yes she had to admit there was a bit of an edge inside this pub. Not the expected tables of bearded folkies in Arran knits, or old people sipping Campari. The bar itself seemed to have a constant throng of louts pressing in on it. She watched as Hunt pushed his way to the front, three sweaty barmaids and the landlord dodged around each other to pull pints, ignoring him. "S'aright?" she saw him nod a greeting to Mr Bullneck. "Expecting a big night?"

"Fuck off." The man turned his shoulder and hunched over his pint.

* * *

"Get that down you." Hunt handed her a gin and tonic and spread three pints out in front of himself. "I ain't going back up in a hurry."

"The man on the phone said I had to be here at seven pm alone," Drake said, pulling back from the window. "I-"

"So, you're thinking, 'Gene, please walk back out and let me run off into the night with a strange man who phones me out of the blue and tells me to meet him at the North-West's unfriendliest pub?'" He stuck out his legs and lit a cigarette. "Here was I thinking you'd be a bit fucking happy that I even showed up."

The clock on the wall now read 6.45. Alex just held her drink up in a silent salute. She mouthed, _I am happy_.

It was funny – when the real you was lying half-dead over rotting floorboards, coming to places like this didn't seem real, let alone dangerous. But an itching, creeping sense of alarm had come to her over the past couple of hours, and the headlights blinding her and Hunt stepping out from the Quattro had made her break into a weary smile. So embarrassing that she'd hung her head to hide it from him.

"We should just call off this Scooby Doo bollocks anyway and head back to London."

Head back to London? "No." Alex swallowed the entire drink in one go and shook her head adamantly. Whoever had called her, whatever he knew, whatever his motives. Whatever the danger, she had to follow after it. If the truth behind Artemis and Actaeon led her back to her body, to her real self and to Molly, she was prepared to do anything.

"I've got a chance here, Gene. Oh, don't give me that look. I'm sorry if you think I ruined your holiday by coming up here, but I … I don't know." She wasn't going to bring up her daughter with Gene again. It always made him angry, and the insinuation that she was just using him until she left would hang between them again. She didn't care to examine her motives. _Anything I do here, anything, it doesn't matter if it gets me back to Molly._

It was now nearly seven pm – the long hand on the clock to just hang.

Alex nearly missed the car outside their window, reversing with a screech from its parking spot. How long had that car been here? She banged on the window, then stepped back from the table, from the sweep of the car's headlights. The car's engine gunned, could be heard above the rock'n'roll on the jukebox inside, and Alex pushed her way through the crowded tables and standing drinkers to the door.

There were no lights out in the car park, and the car was nothing but a black mass and the sound of its tyres on the pot-holes and puddles. The driver paused for a second and she put out her hands to stop him, a futile gesture. The car turned out into the A863 and soon disappeared around a bend.

* * *

"Clear a space now unless you want a dart hanging out your cheek." The landlord had rolled up his sleeves as he clapped three times to get some kind of silence in the bar. Two hundred people, perhaps more, were inside now, and most of them were locals and obviously knew what a flash-tempered bastard he was. "Ladies and gentlemen, the annual final between Yorkshire ladies' darts champion team and our own Lancashire champions is about to start. Give the ladies a round of applause and if I hear any jeers, me barmaids will thump the ever-living shit out of you." He raised his arms for more silence – not the kind of man to care if everyone saw his armpit stains. "And don't forget the disco. It starts at nine after we've cleared the dining tables away."

"I was wondering why there were so many fierce birds here," Hunt said, nodding to the ladies lining up to begin the darts match. "I will be very surprised if this doesn't end in a bottling."

A little drunk now, and her large dark eyes barely took in what he was saying. "This is the most random New Year's Eve gathering I could ever contemplate." Alex shook her glass at him for a refill. "You said it yourself, let's celebrate."

"Your man could still come back."

"You think?" Her dark look to him said not. "I am just going to face it – 'Alex, you're stuck here'. You know? It just goes to show, you can go through your whole life thinking you're successful, smart, in control, and it's only because of circumstance. It's a matter of timing." She brought the empty glass down with venom. "Here, I am... got fired from the 'B team'. I don't have my daughter. I don't even get to solve crimes anymore, not even in my own bloody head. My mum and dad are dead and I couldn't..." She folded her arms, and wouldn't look at him. She wasn't going to say it, but he had the feeling she'd silently added this entanglement between them to her list.

"Like I said," his voice was firm, "your man could still be here." Hunt turned away and made his way back into the throng. Fuck her. He finally made some elbow room at the bar and ordered a pint.

"You're not having the best of nights, are you?"

"Eh?" He looked up from the stack of coins he'd lined up. One of the Lancashire ladies' darts team sat on a stool next to him.

"You and your lady friend there in the corner. You don't neither of your look like you're enjoying yourselves." She brushed her hand across his as she flicked her cigarette ash. "It's funny though, I'm not much either."

"Your team losing then?"

"Oh no." She told him she was just a reserve for the match. "Even if we do lose, we'll still have a good time doing it." She leaned forward towards him. "That's the thing about folk from Yorkshire, They're not exactly known for their fun-loving good times, are they?"

"I'll raise a glass to that."

"And I'll buy you another." Without any encouragement, she talked through three cigarettes, now completely ignoring the darts match and the frowns and mutterings of her own team as they continued to fall further behind the ladies from across the border.

Jan, her name was Jan.

Finally Jan came around to her point. "I'm not having fun and you're not having fun, so let's go for a dance through there in the disco and try to rescue this New Year's Eve." Her eyes flickered. "Or would your lady friend be mad at me?"

"My lady friend … my lady friend is looking for somebody." Hunt couldn't even see Drake now. She'd left the table and could not be seen in the large room. The fireplaces at each end of the room, and the people in between, had warmed the atmosphere to the extent that he was sweating.

Beer in hand, Hunt followed Jan out of the room into the cleared-away dining room where a few couples were dancing to the juke box amid a floor of balloons.

One of the couples was Drake and a man Hunt hadn't seen in the room before. Arm slung straight over Jan's shoulder, and the beer glass in his hand, he observed for a long, irritated minute.

The jukebox stopped. A coin was dropped into the jukebox.

_Get up, get up, get up, get up_

_Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up._

The man's hand was on the small of Drake's back. She'd taken her jacket off, and the man's arm surreptitiously caressed the blue silk of her shirt.

Hunt reeled back a bit and the beer split down Jan's back, but not so she noticed. She moved her hand and he felt it slip comfortably into the back pocket of his trousers.

_And baby, I can't hold it much longer, it's getting stronger and stronger  
And when I get that feeling, I want Sexual Healing_

And they were dancing so closely, Hunt observed, that Drake's chest was pressed to him. An old trick. It was hard to dance that close without your hips pressing too.

_Come take control, just grab a hold, of my body and mind soon we'll be making it  
Honey, oh we're feeling fine  
You're my medicine open up and let me in  
Darling, you're so great, I can't wait for you to operate_

"What's your name?" Jan whispered in his ear, her arms now hanging off his shoulders.

"Gene," he replied absently, catching Alex's eye for the first time.

"I love this song." Jan knew the trick as well. Her breasts, her hips pressed against him. His mind was full – Alex was mouthing something, something urgent – he couldn't catch it.

"I wish they'd play this song again," Jan said.

Huh? He finally caught the words on Drake's lips. "Behind you!" He turned in time to see the punch from the man from the bar who'd told earlier him to fuck off. And it caught him in the teeth. Hunt swayed back on the balls of his feet, wrenched away from Jan's arms in a second as the bloke followed up with a gut shot to the solar plexus.

"You're trying to fucking diddle the wrong missus."

From the floor with its caked-on food scraps, Hunt wiped his sleeve across his bloodied mouth. Maybe it was the concussion talking, but it seemed obvious to him now. The man dancing with Drake was a spook.


	3. Chapter 3

**The lyrics to Burning Love by Elvis Presley do not belong to me.**

_**III**_

He'd hauled himself up.

With a glance in Drake's direction – to note that the spook had now disappeared beyond an excited push of punters blown into the dining room by the sound of a punch-up – Hunt then pointed his assailant to the door. "Get your fat arse outside so we can finish this proper." Did this twonk think the fight was going to end with one sucker punch and pearls of sweat gathering in his neck folds from the exertion of it? And to think that earlier that day he'd smugly thought to himself, _my part of the country now, Drake._ Apparently you could grow up shoeless in a Manchester slum and still be considered a flash git in these parts.

On the car park gravel and with the moon weakly lighting them, he knew himself to be sober, looking around to assess whether any of the other locals were likely to come to Mr Bullneck's assistance. The ground between them was covered quickly, and blows dodged before they fell into an awkward embrace, with the man's teeth sinking into the cloth of Hunt's coat sleeve and the crook of Hunt's elbow jerking his neck back into a choke. The locals tittered – not much of a fight shot to shot, but once freed Hunt drove his fist into the underside of the man's considerable stomach, connecting to the tender skin above his groin.

"Rotten bastard," someone murmured in approval as the man doubled over and Hunt kicked his knees away for good measure.

"Hidey ho," Hunt leaned forward to look into his face. "Shall we let everyone get back inside or do you want to make it a thumping to remember, only you most likely won't?"

* * *

"Gene, he couldn't have been." She frowned at him, handing him a paper napkin. "He talked … like you."

Hunt dipped the napkin into a glass of water and wiped the dried blood off his cheek. "Not all spooks sound like bloody old Etonians, Drake. I'm sure they let a few dirty Northerners into MI5 if they get A pluses in their exams and promise to take up buggery."

"No!" She thought about it some more. "He asked me about the weather, stuff like that..."

"Was that before or after he fondled your tits? And where the fuck is he anyway?" Hunt drew a warning look from the landlord. Hunt knew an ex-squaddie when he saw one and drew her away to the corner of the bar. "That no-neck thumped me and the next thing the man who was working his way through an intimate examination of your arse on the dance floor has disappeared. I'm telling you, they might be crawling all over this place by now."

"On New Year's Eve? To follow us? And you used to call me paranoid."

He'd had enough and glanced at the clock above the barmaid's head. It was 10.30 pm. "Finish your drink and go see the landlord about renting us one of his rooms upstairs."

In the middle of sinking her gin and tonic Drake turned to him, eyebrow raised. "One room?"

"Don't flatter yourself. We'll take turns staying up to see if any of them spooky bastards tries it on. Meanwhile," and he signaled the barmaid, "I have some making up to do with my fine fat-necked friend."

* * *

When you handed a large bloke an absolute hiding, he tended to take it well. It had been the same with Carl – as Hunt learned his name was – and Hunt had helped him back into the warmth of the pub and pushed a pint into his hands.

"Cosy," he said now, sweeping through the door into room six upstairs. Alex looked up from the window, which faced the car park. It was now eleven pm and he thumped the light switch, putting them into darkness, and joined her at the window.

"We are just police offficers you know."

"What do you mean?" She had taken off her jacket and shivered in her jeans and blue top even as the wall radiator creaked into life.

"My new friend Carl was surprisingly with it considering I knocked ten bells out of him. He could look around the room and tell me who was a local and who wasn't. And surprise, surprise, all the strangers in the pub aside from the Yorkshire Ladies' Darts team were funny little men in suits or suspicious casual wear, hanging about and trying to look inconspicuous." He slumped down beside her. "This place is infested with MI5. I don't know how, but it is."

Alex's laugh was uncertain, and she kept her eyes on the rows of cars below. "This is on the say-so of a guy who you terrorised and administered a beating to? I'm just saying … if you'd suggested that Jesus was lurking in the corner by the pool table, he probably would have agreed with you to avoid another gut punch."

He snatched the curtains closed, and paced the room to take its measure. Mirror, vanity, arm chair, bed, her suitcase on the floor. "We're staying up here. If they want to fucking start some trouble, they'll have to come through that door."

"And then what?"

_We hand over those bloody Edgehampton files and promise to be good from now on_, he thought. "Sit down, Alex."

* * *

_Lord Almighty, I feel my temperature rising  
Higher higher, It's burning through to my soul  
Girl, girl, girl, You gonna set me on fire  
My brain is flaming, I don't know which way to go_

Hunt offered her his hip flask, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling his sleeves up. He said, "Now they're playing Elvis down there." The song volume increased, came up through the floorboards, the shag-pile carpet. Also the sound of squawks and men's voices rising to compete with the song.

"You have to give it to the landlord," she toasted hiim with the flask. "He hasn't skimped on the heating." The room felt airless and Hunt's forehead was damp.

He didn't want to talk so she stared at the complicated pattern of the bedspread. The only illumination came from from the pub's outside lights reflecting in the pools of water in the car-parl.

_Your kisses lift me higher, Like the sweet song of a choir  
You light my morning sky, With burning love_

She bent up to peer out the window into the car park. Just the usual teenagers, shut out of the revels, lingering around the edges and shivering in their jackets. And a snogging older couple bent over the bonnet of a Morris Minor. She thought she recognised one of the victorious Yorkshire ladies' darts champions crooking her solid arm around her lover's neck.

_It's coming closer, The flames are now licking my body  
and won't you please help me, I feel like I'm slipping away  
It's hard to breathe, And my chest is a-heaving_

The song stopped and so did the volley of noise from below them.

"Maybe our spooks have gone home to bed, and they'll catch up with us tomorrow." She watched him re-roll his shirt-sleeves carefully. He was listening to her now – her voice so soft he leant his head towards her slightly to catch what she was saying. It was weeks … maybe months since they had shared this kind of intimacy and he didn't look at her, just looked down at his hands, examining the faint tan line made by his wedding ring.

"I have one of those myself." She held her hand out, but her own tan line had gone. Did she have it, here in 1981? "I lost my ring though, before my husband and I separated. Maybe that's what drove him over the edge. Carelessness. He said it used to drive him wild."

Hunt's eyes were on her, unsympathetic. He had never asked about her ex-husband and obviously from the way he looked away, he didn't want to spend the minutes before the dawning of 1982 hearing about him. Maybe she felt a little silly too ... sometimes she knew she came across as callous, even willfully fickle. Why had she never shaken that habit?

A coin into the jukebox and the instantly recognisable heartbeat of Vienna, the notes of the synthesizer that had transferred her from her dying body into this world.

* * *

"Do you wish you were down at Luigi's tonight instead with the team?" she asked him. "Probably better than being stuck up here waiting for MI5 to burst through the door I bet." And again, he didn't answer, so she continued. "Is that what you want for the next year, Gene? Same as this year? Are you happy if everything stays the same? Ray and Chris in the back of the Quattro, Viv in charge of the cells. Is that what you want?"

Voices, people were stirring downstairs – the buzz before the countdown to midnight, the shouted requests for the perfect song to usher in the New Year, disagreements, the landlord bawling out a warning, scraping of tables...

He put down the hip flask and looked at her, eyes shifting across her face, taking in the shadows that smoothed away everything but the keen question in her eyes, her lips, her nose, the expression on her brow. "No, I don't want to repeat this year. Fighting idiots for you, fighting with you, running around for you."

Saying the words cemented it in his mind. He had never chased after a woman in his life until now, and he was too old to do it now without looking like a stupid, undignified bastard. Maybe that's why he was here tonight and not sitting quiet and drunk in the corner at Luigi's – she was following some strange map back to wherever her daughter was, and perhaps he should help her so they could both get their equilibrium back. She sometimes talked about feeling as if the room was swaying.

_Well, maybe it feels like that for me too._

Ten – nine – eight – seven – six … No song was perfect enough to capture what 1982 promised and the jukebox stayed silent … Five – four – three – two – ONE … and the 'one' rose into a chorus of cheering.

"Happy New Year." With a pause because the expression in his eye was brutal, Alex leaned over to kiss him, her lips and cheek cool against his. She silenced a word of surprise when he leaned back after a minute and placed her hands carefully back into her own lap.

"You think I'm talking knob rot about spooks 'n' all, but I'm not." And he looked to the door and didn't shift from it.

* * *

An hour passed without a word between, although they listened to many angry warnings from the landlord to push the revelers out of his pub doors and into the night. People loitered by their cars, tried to get back in the pub, sat in their cars until finally the cold made up their minds. _That is the biggest collection of drunk drivers I am ever likely to see in my life_, Alex thought.

And then they listened to the creaks, slamming doors that shook the floor under them, whispers that were maddening because they seemed to come from right outside the door.

Alex slept in the bed fitfully for two hours, shivering under the covers in her jeans and top even though their room was warm, stuffy even. When she woke to the sound of rain spattering on the window, she felt clammy and the silk of the top clung to her skin as she shifted about in the bed.

She had turned away from Hunt to sleep – and he'd settled in the armchair, his new coat over his shoulders and chest and closed his eyes. There were now no other sounds in the dark – no banging doors, no creaking boards, just a reassuring faint snuffling from Hunt every now and then. Reassuring too the red LED lights of the alarm clock showing 3.15 am.

It was unbearable and she rose silently, stepping around her suitcase and Hunt's plastic bag of clothes. The bathroom was down the hall and a few hours ago she would have been scared enough to ask him to accompany her, but now that felt ridiculous and she smiled to herself as she opened the door and tiptoed down the still hall.

"Thank god." Just to splash water on her face and strip off the damp clothes and turn on a hot shower.

* * *

She didn't pick that his sleep breathing had stopped as she stood in front of the mirror and took off her dressing gown. In her black underwear, hair dripping spots of water down her back, she couldn't see much of a reflection. Certainly not Alex Drake from 2008, exhausted, mildly exasperated mother.

She held her breath to listen for those creaks, Hunt's spooks whispering outside the door, but there was only that deep calm of the few hours before dawn and the dying away of the rain as it shifted north.

Turning to the bed, she caught the change in the room immediately, saw a glint in Hunt's eyes as he observed her from the arm chair, still but awake and silent. It annoyed her to be caught out in such a moment, but he ignored that and pushed the coat onto the floor, rising to join her in the mirror reflection.

They had been this close before, but never sober and never so aware of the tensions surrounding the touch of his hands on her arms. His eyes cast up and down her body in the mirror, fascinated and undeterred because after a long moment Gene drew her back with him, sitting himself on the edge of the messy bed and settling her body between his legs, and her waist and hips into the embrace of his arms.

The way she had kissed him at midnight, quietly and passionately, had played on his mind for hours. Like a stone in his shoe, an irritant as he tried to concentrate on the sounds outside the room, as he sat in the armchair and watched the bedclothes slip from her bare shoulders and her restless turning in her sleep.

Gene looked up into her face now, his hands feeling slowly around the hollow of her waist to her back. Alex was still a little angry with him, but he could guide her hands to his shirt to undo the row of white buttons, to shrug the shirt off.

He imagined what she was thinking as she pulled back a little – was this a bad idea? Now that she had brought him back to admitting his desire again, did she want to push him away in that careless way she had?

But he wouldn't give her the chance, and pulled her back down onto the bed with him. The collapse of her body onto his, the press of her breasts in her bra, strengthened his erection and she murmured something inarticulate into his cheek as his hands slipped up under her knickers. Almost a feeling strong enough to make her draw away but he held her there, his fingers drawing a line down her hip until she fell onto her back with a slight laugh.

Now … no longer afraid of pauses that could break the spell between them. Hunt leaned over her, his hair flopping about his face, one hand grappling with the belt of his trousers until she helped him and he pushed them away off the bed, and his socks and shoes too. She watched and waited, shivering now that the radiator had switched itself off and the temperature of the room dropped to uncomfortable coolness.

She liked the look of him here in the dark – his unkempt body, his eyes a little greedy, a little in wonder as he saw her breasts for the first time and saw his hands cupping one, caressing one.

A volley of soft murmurs into the side of his neck as his hand returned to trace that line from her hip down between her legs, slipping between them as she curled an arm around his neck and kissed him through the sensations.


	4. Chapter 4

_**IV**_

They stood in front of the mirror in the bluish morning light, looked at each other. Their breath fogged the mirror's reflection and they turned to survey the room: the bed-clothes heaped in a great pile, the alarm clock knocked off the bedside table and blinking from the floor.

They had both entered quietly and they were trained to assess a scene. Only they didn't need to. Sex.

The two men exchanged a look – not raised "wa-hey" eyebrows because they were both edgy at having not secured their targets. One looked down through the curtains to the parking lot where only Alex Drake's rented car sat now. The red Quattro had gone minutes before and their own car parked under an oak tree at the far end wouldn't get them far.

* * *

"Fucking leave IT!" He'd tugged on her arm roughly, pulling her towards the Quattro as she ran over the gravel and slipped the jacket over her shoulders. "I'll phone that Welsh gobshite later about collecting his piece of junk."

Jerking the car back out of its parking spot, he'd almost been at the exit to the A863 when he footed the brake hard and reversed back past the Throstle's welcome sign into a wheeling rotation around the car park, stopping next to the only other vehicle. "Rovers are for wankers," Hunt had said in a considered tone as he sunk a pocket knife into its front tires.

"Come on!" She'd urged him and he hadn't looked up at the pub and the sounds of stirring, maybe shouting. They pulled out left onto the A863, the car disturbing the peaceful road and surrounding fields and woods back towards Lancaster. Not another vehicle out early on Near Year's Day.

Not another car. Only they were looking for an old landrover that Alex had spotted as she stood by the window gazing out past the pub, to the heavy still fog still hanging on the grass of the fields beyond the A863.

The landrover had pulled slowly into the car park, and she knew it was him, had called Hunt over and within a minute they were crashing into each as they lurched across the room looking for their clothes. Hunt was still buttoning his shirt up now as he steered with one hand down the stretches of empty road. Nothing around each corner.

As they'd scrambled down into the car park their man had been pulling out to the left – had he seen them? They hadn't said a word, although it was on her lips to scream out. Was he even their man? Hunt doubted her conviction that it was, but said nothing and drove with his usual carelessness.

_What had she expected? That he would just drop his boxers and wham bam – thank you ma'am? Yes, perhaps she had. Maybe that's why she'd laughed him off so long … he wasn't real, but even so she hadn't want to hand him some kind of victory over her when everything about him told her he was a ridiculous, hard-hearted man. _

_Only he didn't seem to want to roll off her triumphantly after a quick shag. It was like he couldn't feel how cold the room had grown ... the landlord must have turned the radiator off finally ... her hands brushed over his arms and felt his goose-pimpled flesh. He drew her up onto her knees, himself too. One hand on her neck to deepen their kiss, another around her arse to coax her body in towards him as the bedsprings creaked in the silence. There was nothing between him. Her breasts swelled against his chest and he'd nudged a knee between her legs. Every time she pulled her mouth away from his she could see the tension in his face as he ignored the urgency of his cock.  
_

_Minutes passed. Nothing like she'd ever experienced, especially because she kept thinking ''It's Gene Hunt", Gene squeezing her breast and her arse. _

_She was growing a little desperate, with his hands all over her body and taking his time. And he kept kissing her. He'd been watching her for months – he'd never made a secret of it – and now he wasn't going to move her straight onto her back, quick satisfaction and the end. In his concentration, he almost seemed angry, but his hands seemed intent on committing the small of her back, the feeling of her soft arms to a sense memory. _

_They were both so quiet. And it was only as her frustration built too far and she groaned 'oh' against his ear, then he was spurred into moving his hand back between her legs again, one thumb pressing, then circling. _

"_Take them off," she demanded laughingly, pointing to his boxer shorts. But he shook his head and tried to push her onto her back. "Take them OFF." He'd wanted to keep the boxers around his thighs like he was used to, but she pulled back to stare at him – ridiculous because she was pale and naked in his arms. Panting, he relented and now he groaned as her hands brushed against his cock as she struggled to pull the boxers down his legs. _

The memory brought a puzzled look of wonder to Alex's face and Hunt caught the look. To cover, he pulled up quickly onto the side of the road next to a farm-gate. "We've come too far. We're near Lancaster and we'll just heading South at this rate back to Manchester." Their breathing had fogged up the car's windows and he peered ahead and in the rear-view mirror in case MI5's finest should catch up with them in their limping Rover.

It went unsaid and they couldn't exactly look at each other. Alex seemed a little despairing, but half of her thought how much wiser it would just be to start the car and drive all the way back to London on this clear, cold day.

Wiser, and the hormones and emotions of the hours that had preceded this moment were still coursing through her blood like the lingering effects of a drug. Wiser, but she couldn't tell him to start the car again.

_The bed-board cold against his back and his legs and arms sweaty. He was half leaning back and Alex sat astride him. Her hair brushed across his face as she bent to kiss him. Was it worth it? All these months? Yes, and involuntarily he banged his head against the bed-board, groaning. Christ, put him out of his misery. He closed his eyes as she settled onto his cock and the sensations racked him. _

_Gene was glad of the dark. The feelings and the sight of her face in this obscure light was enough to drive him mad. They still only snuck looks at each other too, both dishonest about how profound this felt. Words came to him – lovely – that embarrassed him as he thought them and he put them out of his thoughts. Sex should be the culmination of a game – whether the game was long or short, and it should feel like a conclusion, the end of longing. _

_It **was** maddening that every touch, every look in this dark made him want to come like a gobby teenage boy.__He felt confused even as his hands reached out to cup her breasts, and she rocked slowly back and forth on him. He wanted to come, but he didn't want it to end and she kept tempting him, painfully. _

_Last a bit longer. Gene bent up a bit so that they could kiss again and he could slowly rock with her too. The fretful whisper of her words as she swayed over him, each gasp as he brought her closer to coming, the rustling of the sheets… each weakened his resolve._

_But then she surprised him and bent forward to hold his wrists against the pillows. "Got you where I want you." It was a playful gesture, but Hunt hadn't felt free of resentment all night and the cut on his lip from Carl's punch was stinging through their kisses. He wrestled her onto her back. _

* * *

The fog lifted from the fields around them, and the sky cleared over the distant hills. The landrover drew up behind.

"Hey up." Hunt turned awkwardly in his seat, bumping into her as she did the same. The man in the landrover was dark-haired, had no expression on his face. The headlights flashed twice and the man swung the vehicle around 180 degrees to head back towards Hornby.

Hunt followed the landrover for a couple of miles until they reached a wooded area, intersected by the road, and their man suddenly swerved to the left into the trees.

"Shit!" He slammed the brakes and reversed to follow, yelping an "oh fuck!" as the smooth tarcealed road gave way to a narrow track through the gloomy, still depths of trees. Bowland's countryside, which had seemed all open moorland and small copses, sank quickly down into a deep valley. They were descending too rapidly – the Quattro struggled over the deep pits in the dirt track. The minutes of tumult threw Alex against the door again and again as he punished the car to keep up with the landrover ahead.

Alex finally buckled herself in as they ground against the muddy tire track, grooved deep into the dirt. One mislaid second and they would veer off into the trees.

"Hunt, stop!" Around a sharp corner, the man appeared suddenly to flag them down, unconcerned as the Quattro wrenched to a halt inches from his legs. Clad in a dark camouflage jacket and jeans, his crew-cut head uncovered, he came around to Hunt's window, but he looked at Alex.

"Park your car off up here..." He pointed to another track, impossible to see unless you knew it was there.

"No."

"Can that thing ford a river? Because if it can't, it will sit to rust in it." His voice had a military clip to it – he didn't sound posh, Hunt thought, and he didn't sound troubled, paranoid or impatient in any way. Hunt reversed the car onto the side track for several yards and they walked down to join the man on the main track. From here, the car could not be seen for the thick trees and the undergrowth.

Even so, the man kicked a rotting branch over the entrance to the track and walked, whistling back to the land rover. "Get in, Alex," he invited her firmly, but friendly. And he looked at Hunt for the first time. "I don't know your name, but I think we spoke briefly on the phone. You should follow us on foot."

"Oh should I?!" And Hunt's snort was silenced as Alex climbed up onto the rider board of the passenger side.

"I'll be fine, Gene."

"She will." The man opened his door. "I'll drive slowly and you'll be able to keep us in sight at all times."

Hunt's boots were already sinking into the muddy tire tracks as the engine started again. Stepping onto the soft fern undergrowth he followed the landrover from the very edge of the track. It hardly seemed like day, with the ancient trees bent over the track to cover the sky from them.

_I'm not made for this_, he thought. After thirty minutes of following the coasting landrover, he knew he'd walked more now than in the past ten years. And in this sullen, airless wood too, completely alien to him.

The promised river was forded easily by the land rover and the man gunned the engine up the bank on the other side. Hunt took his time, rolled his trouser legs to his knees and took off his boots and socks to cross over the great slime-covered river stones. The water clear and brilliantly cold.

The things he did, the things he did.

_It had only occurred to her as she lay back on her pillow that she hadn't slept in two days and she was exhausted enough to fall asleep even as the film of sweat on her arms and breasts made her shiver. _

_Hunt slept too for an hour. He woke suddenly. Alex had retreated to the furthest edge of her side of the bed, the blankets carelessly leaving her back and arse exposed. Still the back of her calf touched his knee and he reached across to touch her shoulder. More light in the room now – weak daylight illuminated the patterns on the curtains and they glowed._

_He should have tucked the blankets under her and drawn the curls back from over her face. But he was wide awake and he had to have her again.

* * *

_

The small stone house sat at the edge of the wood where the valley petered out into a series of rising hills, the further criss-crossed with lines of sheep. As Hunt came out of the trees and into the house's stone yard where the landrover was parked, he found the man and Alex already talking quite rationally, quite friendly, both leaning against the open boot door as they waited for him.

"Tell me again why I had to walk the whole way." Hunt had known straight away that getting angry would only give this bloke satisfaction.

"I didn't know whether I wanted to ditch you."

_Tricky fucker_, and Hunt's weight on the landrover strained it even more as he rested beside them to pull his boots back on.

"But you seem like an OK chap," and the man held out his hand. "My name is Matthew Mantle." He held the hand patiently until Hunt felt like shaking it. "Alex wanted to get out a couple of times to check on you, but we've been having quite a conversation about what you two have discovered."

"I need a brew first." Without an invitation, he pushed open the door to the house and walked through the living room into its kitchen. The fire must have been lit early on in the morning because their cheeks were red with warmth within seconds.

Matthew Mantle put the kettle on to boil and then turned from the stove to face them, arms crossed. He looked about thirty-five years' old, definitely a soldier, Hunt had now decided. He wasn't bulky, wasn't skinny, he looked lean and fit, with deep grooves in his cheeks and a determination to be in control of the two people now sitting at his kitchen table.

Hunt paced the kitchen as Alex told him briefly about their discovery of the Artemis file, and Mantle listened and poured them mugs of tea. She was so excited now that she gestured wildly as she described the web of information and how it made no sense until she had found the second file, Actaeon.

Actaeon? Mantle turned then, and the complacency left his face.

"What do you know about it then?" Hunt covered the space between himself and the man, the tea spilled across the wooden table. Ignoring Alex's protest, he poked a finger into Mantle's chest. "She just blurted out what we know. What do you know? Nothing?"

Mantle leaned back to pick up a tea towel. "I sent you those newspaper clippings. If I know nothing, how would I know all these people – the MP, that woman who killed herself while you were investigating her – were connected in some way to Edgehampton?" He spread the tea towel over the spilt tea. "You have two names decoded, probably from tens of names you haven't decoded. You have two files and you can't understand them. You're the ones who don't know anything."

"Spell it out then!"

He looked through the kitchen windows over the fields. "I know that one of the names that you couldn't decode in the Actaeon file is Price."


	5. Chapter 5

**_V_**

"Caroline and Tim Price?" Alex put down her coffee cup quickly, and went over to the window, into his space. "They couldn't be in the file. You're wrong."

"He's trying to hook you in, Drake. Aren't you?"

Matthew Mantle wiped a granule of instant coffee dust from the side of his lip, folding his arms to demonstrate he wasn't intimidated. A few sheep had ventured over the ridge of the distant hills, following a well-grooved trail through the claggy grass. It was a ridiculously bucolic scene.

"I was there when the Prices died," Alex said quietly, still too close. "It was..." How could she explain it? The blinding scenes that came to her several times every night. And how so recently she had seen the looping reel unfold again, with the full knowledge and guilt of an adult whose stupidity had failed to stop its repeating conclusion.

"I know," Mantle stepped back. "I know you investigated their deaths, and I know..." He looked with a particular keen sense of contempt at Hunt, "I know **you **just dropped it and let it die quietly."

"You fucking pillock!" Hunt now pushed her aside and stood nose to nose with the man. "The husband killed the wife and himself, and he tried to kill his kid too because he was an insane weird criminal-loving leftie freaking..." For once he ran out of words and slapped away her hand from his sleeve as she attempted to restrain him.

Mantle walked through the kitchen's back door into the shadowy back yard, with its scattering of wooden clothes pegs. He leaned against a shin-high stone wall that provided a weak border against the encroaching fields.

"Please," Alex had followed him and Hunt came after her, even though he had whispered, "He is a liar. He has got us all the way out of here to mess with your bloody head."

"You just let it go," Mantle said finally, looking at Hunt only. "And all the other cases that you just shone a quick torch light on and then filed away in your cabinets. I don't know how you could do that."

"What are you talking about, Matthew?"

"The woman that killed herself? Conning? Your superior there decided pretty quickly that she killed her husband. And those women that jumped off the bridge, who he marked down as suiciding together..." He had a pleasant smile, but his eyes were showing contempt again. "You make it so easy, DCI Hunt. I am here, hiding for the rest of my life, because I couldn't do what you do." And he focused on Alex again. "I used to be in MI5 and they made a big mistake with me. Because they want to recruit you, keep you in a little box, and never let you see the sun."

She was struggling to keep up with him.

"And I could never just be in a little box, and I don't know why their pysch assessment didn't tell them that before they brought me in." Mantle paced along the edge of the stone wall. "I saw you on that day when we collected the body of Martin Kennedy from the morgue and I thought to myself that you were going to get yourself in trouble." He glanced up, smiling at her briefly. "But I could understand it, because you're like me. You can't not know and you can't not look for the truth. That's what made me want to help you."

"This is turning into a bloody revival meeting. Hallelujah, start making sense!"

"Here's some sense for you." Mantle watched him light a cigarette before he continued. "Your problem, Hunt, is that you stopped being the man who keeps the bodies buried. When you get back to Fenchurch East, if you get back … you'll find that your superiors will have moved very quickly against you. I've been on the run too long to know which MI5 man infiltrated the Metropolitan Police, but whoever it is will reveal themselves one way or another."

* * *

Assistant Commissioner Adrien Vanderzee watched the lunchtime squash game from the tiered seating above court number one. A man he knew by nod alone was being thrashed, and from his position above the players' heads Vanderzee could tell he was playing all the wrong angles. He glanced at his watch and thought about heading back to the changing rooms to shower.

The man had said midday exactly, but sitting here in his damp squash clothes he was getting more and more uncomfortable.

"Sorry, I'm a minute late, Assistant Commissioner. Unforgiveable." And the man was late, but he'd brought Vanderzee a glass of water.

"I thought I was meeting Glover," Vanderzee said. He'd met this man once or twice before and he quite liked him, with his square glasses and tidy little moustache, but he wasn't going to take orders from him.

"Mr Glover is not in the country at the moment, and very sorry he couldn't meet you."

"Well." Vanderzee handed him back the empty glass. "What's the point of the meeting then?"

"He wanted to reiterate in person … thank you for telling us that he is up in the North, and we have confirmed that. And now I hope we both agree that we need to take the agreed course of action."

Vanderzee bent forward over his knees as the squash game came to an end and the ball thumped to a dead stop on the court. "I didn't agree to it."

"Yes you did."

* * *

The peculiar position of the small stone farm house, at the edge of the thick wooded valley, meant that the approaching cars could be heard at least two minutes before they would arrive.

Mantle scratched his head as he listened to them. "I'd guess that's only a couple of cars, but who knows how many of my former colleagues are in them." He put one foot on the stone wall. "This does cut short our conversation."

Hunt stubbed out the cigarette quickly. "Get us out of here in your jeep thing there."

"It's not mine," Mantle replied, and the noise of the cars was growing louder. It wasn't a straight dirt road down through the trees, but then the cars were coming on fast, recklessly. "It's not my house either."

The open fields one way, with a clear sight up to the hills a good twenty minutes' walk off. Or the thick trees back towards the sound of the cars. Alex tugged on Hunt's arm and they stepped quickly over the wall and followed it back to the edge of the wood. Mantle kept pace with them, unconcerned and even whistling. When they reached the cover of the trees, he put out a courteous arm as if to usher them through a door.

Immediately the tree canopy above drowned the weak light and heightened the echo of the car engines around them. Only Mantle knew where the dirt track was.

After a minute's walking Hunt had to admit only Mantle would also know in what direction they were walking. _North - South - East - fucked if I know._

"They've stopped. They'll be searching the house." Matthew picked his way through the bracken, stopping to pick up a long straight branch for a walking stick. "Then they'll wonder if they've been wasting more hours. Maybe they'll look at the woods and make excuses for not trying to follow us in here."

"Is this all a game to you?" Alex asked, breathless in keeping up with his casual, relentless pace.

"No." His tone with Alex was completely different to that with Hunt. _No_.

They had reached a slight clearing, where two rotten trees had broken or been cut down near their bases. Hunt realised that this was the exact spot where Mantle had meant to take them.

"Alex, you are in the same situation as I am. I wanted to tell you that because it's hard to know until it's too late." He handed her the walking stick. "I can just imagine how amazing it must have felt when you broke into Edgehampton and came back out with the Artemis file." His voice lowered, Hunt dismissed from his mind. "But you never wondered why it was so easy for you to break in and just walk out. You thought you were clever, but you never wondered."

"They let us break in to Edgehampton?" She shot a quick look to Hunt.

"They let everyone break in." Mantle was drifting away. "Or they let everyone try."

* * *

"Have you ever hidden in the woods?" Hunt asked her as they sat against a fallen tree, the dampness in the ground and in the dead tree trunk sinking into their clothes. "Scared or not, the bloody time doesn't pass quickly, does it?" He tried to ignore the stiffness in his fingers.

"I grew up in London, so no. Although if you'd brought some marshmallows I could have helped you burn them over an open camp fire."

"I'm a Manc lad. If I see a squirrel I might have to jump into your arms for safety." Mantle had disappeared hours ago and they had been wandering most of that time. Except for the odd twitch of a bird foraging for worms on the ground, or a ewe bleating far off, it was silent.

"Don't you rather wonder if we came in a circle, and this is the same clearing he brought us to in the morning?" He could tell she was trying not to be pessimistic, but what little light reached through the trees would fade very soon.

Hunt lit another cigarette and contemplated a night out in the cold. Of course they would have to huddle for body warmth, and he'd seen the odd film where stranded trampers or skiers had to dig snow caves and strip off to exchange body heat. The thought gave him a gloomy thrill for a second.

"Maybe we **should** stay here." She was watching the glow of his cigarette, the burning ember pulsing with each inhale. "If Mantle wasn't lying to us, we are ... are..."

"We are fucked, Drake. Yes, the only way my day would be rescued is if Kate Bush comes over the moors in a leotard right now to rescue me." He ignored her reluctant smile and stood up stiffly, offered a hand. "That twat probably went straight back to the day care centre for the comprehensively deranged. Probably sitting in a nice armchair watching Zippy and Bungle as we speak."

The cars had started hours ago and driven back up the track to the top of the valley and A863. But they had taken no chances. Hunt hoped the Quattro had remained hidden, and that they would get the chance to find it back up the dirt track.

When they found the track an hour later, Alex gave a small cry of delight and their pace quickened, despite the coating of mud on their boots, and the penetrating chill as the sun lowered in the mid afternoon.

"Where are we going to go?" she asked as they rounded another bend, and sighted the branch Mantle had used to cover the Quattro's hiding place.

"Well …" Hunt threw the branch aside and walked around the Quattro to inspect it for scratches. They climbed inside and then he answered. "I wouldn't remotely contemplate this, but we are about fucking desperate enough to have to."

She liked this gallows humour about him. "Back to London?"

"No DI Drake." The car started perfectly, a full hip flask of scotch was in the glove compartment and he snatched it off her. "No journey to the North-West is complete without an overnight stay at Clitheroe's third-best caravan park. Your friendly hosts for the night, Don and Morna Skelton."


	6. Chapter 6

_**VI**_

"We don't have to do this, you know. It's Chris's parents. I met them once and they scared the shit out of me. That welcome sign swinging there is bloody false advertising." Beyond the entrance to the Clitheroe happy holidays caravan park, the home of Morna and Don Skelton sat beyond a copse of trees. A cluster of caravans huddled together pathetically in an adjacent field like sheltering sheep.

Alex turned towards him as the car idled. They had nowhere else to go, and she felt ill with thinking about the implications of what Matthew Mantle had said. Her parents somehow even more mixed up with Edgehampton secrets than she'd thought... Mantle's revelation that their break-in to the vault in Edgehampton had been some kind of trap ... and Hunt likely to be drummed out of the Met once they got back to London. "I just want a hot bath and a drink."

Hunt drove slowly up the tarcealed drive towards the house. "Are you even allowed to let people stay in caravans in the middle of winter?"

A smallish man had heard the car on the driveway and came out of the house, standing in the doorway without a word as they slammed the doors and stalked up towards him. Behind him, Chris suddenly appeared and the delight on his face almost made Alex cry with relief. 

"For fuck's sake," she heard Hunt mutte_r_ as Chris hugged him. "Yeah alright. Nice to see you." He clapped Chris on the back and pushed him away at the same time.

* * *

He couldn't have looked more awkward – the kitchen seemed too small, too fussy, with its pottery collection of hens – salt cellars, pepper shakers. And he stared down glumly at the tea-towel with its picture of Princess Di and Prince Charles. Alex knew he wouldn't have offered to dry up if she hadn't insisted on washing the dishes after dinner.

Also, she supposed he didn't want to be sitting in the living room, plumb next to Mr Skelton or Mrs Skelton, or forced to make polite after-dinner conversation with Chris himself. So he'd picked up a plate that she'd just washed and spent two minutes rubbing it dry, distracted.

This was so jarring. Being in these odd people's little kitchen with the fire making both their cheeks red, with the low pitched roof and having to stoop as these people fussed around him like characters out of Beatrix Potter. Except they weren't happy to have them there. They'd barely said a word to each other, or to their guests, since their arrival two hours ago.

Chris's suggestion that Alex and Gene use the shower had seen Mr Skelton's cheek twitch, and Mrs Skelton had stalked off to the kitchen to pad out the dinner of roast lamb with some extra vegetables.

Now Alex concentrated on washing the plates, with their sticking of gravy and mint sauce. It was odd. They had been alone for much of the day, but now that it was a black night and they had some distance from the day's events, the awkwardness of that morning had returned.

How did you look and talk easily with someone when just that last night you'd … she raised her eyes to the ceiling … _shagged the lights out of them._ When you were the reason they were here, and in a world of trouble.

_Odd man_. This kitchen was the perfect place to broach the silence, but she just couldn't. She kept murmuring to herself absently. And he was taking so long with the dishes that Mrs Skelton had enough finally of them being in her space and shooed them out, called in Don to help her.

The only place in the living room – what with Mrs Skelton's knitting bag sitting on one chair and a psychotic old black cat on another - was on the couch next to Chris and Hunt rolled his eyes as he sank down beside him, thighs touching. Chris quickly scooted into the middle and Alex sat down on the other side. She heard him sighing, not able to concentrate on the programme on the television – current affairs. Power cuts in the South, weather misery up in Scotland. The wind whipped a fragile leafless tree branch against the window pane next to the cat.

"Ad break," and Chris leaned forward to turn down the sound on the television. In the silence they caught the end of the conversation coming from the kitchen.

"I don't think they really can work with Christopher … she looks like a tart." That was Mrs Skelton.

"I doubt anyone's complaining..." And Mr Skelton.

"I feel like running her up a nice smock on the sewing machine"

"I'm sure she'd thank you kindly for it." Don obviously had a bent for sarcastic asides.

"I s'pose that's what you get when ladies can become policemen nowadays. Really, I'm sure Chris doesn't know where to look."

At that moment Chris didn't know where to look. He stared at the muted ads and Alex slowly looked across him to Hunt as Mrs Skelton could be heard to offer that he hoped the other women in London didn't dress as provocatively.

She raised her eyebrows at him, friendly, willing to share a laugh about herself. And Hunt stared back – had he been listening? He stared and stared._ To hell with you then_, she thought before she realised what he was thinking about and dipped her head back behind Chris.

The current affairs programme again – and the night wore on, with cups of tea served to them, and Alex making polite conversation that seemed to wither and die. The cat kept its spot on the chair and Mr Skelton disappeared off to see to a complaint from a holiday-maker about the hot water in the toilet block.

* * *

Hunt felt slightly disgusted at this predicament – even though it had been his idea. Of all places, ending up in this tiny over-heated house where the people treated Chris like a teenager, where he felt unwelcome and uncomfortable, and every time he moved he worried about bumping into a piece of porcelain and knocking it to the carpet.

He couldn't help it. He might explode in rage – _she's just sat there, watching the bloody telly, eyes wide as if there's nothing in the world to bother her. _A cup of tea poised on her crossed knee. It was why he felt as if he might explode – this tension inside him and she didn't even seem to feel it.

"My grandmother has a tea cosy like that," Alex was saying.

He crashed his cup down and stormed off to take a piss in their tiny bathroom, head in hands as he sat there, gazing at the tiny obscene flowers on the wallpaper and the doll covering the spare toilet roll. A scroll hung on the back of the door – ten commandments for a happy marriage. Number nine: never go to bed on an argument.

She'd slept with him, okay, and he could remember every minute of it, the powerful feeling of making her cry out as he groaned to a climax. The effort from then on of thinking about little else and how bad-tempered it had made him. Not even Matthew Mantle's mad accusations could wipe the vivid images from his mind.

But now she might be embarrassed and waiving the night off to the cold, exhaustion, the drinks she'd knocked back at the Throstle, or worse...

He'd always wondered what would happen once he'd got the chance. And now he was enduring it. She'd been on the verge of sleeping with him a few times, but now the consequences were following. The agony of having got what you wanted and knowing what it felt like – the taste of her body, the softness of her flesh, how womanly she was. Getting what you wanted, but only once.

"Ahh." Mrs Skelton was standing annoyingly close to the bathroom when he came out as if listening to check that he didn't flush the toilet twice or unravel too much toilet paper. Alex moved past her in the narrow hall and thanked her for a lovely dinner. The television had been switched off, and Chris grabbed his jacket to follow them out into the cold.

"Just give us a bell if you need any extra blankets out there," Mrs Skelton said. "We try to ensure everything's cosy, but folk are all different." Her eyes roved over Alex in judgement as she said that and showed them out the door into the dark wind.

* * *

Alex wiped at her nose as it began to run – she crossed the skiddy lawn towards the field and the caravans, flicking the button on her watch to light up the time. nine pm. The moon was only a shaving in the sky and clouds slid over its surface in quick succession. She could hear Hunt breathing behind her and glanced back at him, as he picked his way in those boots across the frosted hard ground.

"Which caravans are ours, Chris?" she asked and Chris bounded ahead like a dog thrown a stick to turn on the lights. Light – the one sour bulb glowed weakly and she stepped up into the caravan, baulking at the grim freezing air inside, and at the thin blankets made up neatly on the bed. A bleak night ahead and she had no warm clothes to pile on.

"I can't believe you two came all the out here to see us," Chris said, unburdened by the glances that passed between them. "I was just wondering what was happening back in London, y'know what Shaz was up to, and Ray."

No one had an answer for him. "Cosy," Hunt nodded finally to Chris, pointing inside to the caravan.

"I'll show you to your caravan, Guv." But Hunt didn't move, and finally Chris began to understand. "Oh, it's over there, that one with the green stripe, really snug. I just cleaned out the roof cavity yesterday."

"Night, Chris."

"Goodnight, Guv … uh ma'am."

Hunt lingered by the door, lighting a cigarette. He hadn't said one single word to her all evening, and she couldn't stand it any longer. Maybe he could just help too, to bridge the embarrassment between them. After all it was only sex (her stomach flipped though at the memory of his cock in her, and his fingers coaxing her to a climax, his face flushed against her own). He handed over his hip-flask and they stood in the gloomy light swapping the bottle back and forth as the cold settled into their limbs, both sniffing now. The owl grew louder and louder and occasionally someone stirred in a caravan somewhere further down the field. Who on earth would stay in a caravan in the middle of winter? Besides us, her thought trailed off...

"Well," she nudged him with her elbow. "Aren't you glad you came? Luxury holidaying like this?" In the faint light, she smiled even more brightly to jog him along, get something out of him.

"Yeah, well you know, great food, good conversation." And he showed that grim satisfaction as she burst into laughter. "Christopher's mum had you pegged from the start. Perceptive woman that."

"Err yes." She continued to laugh. "I don't envy Shaz if she ever decides to do the whole meet the in-laws thing."

Hunt took a long swig, put one boot onto the first step next to her leg. "She'll be up all night worrying about you getting your hooks into her lovely little son so you've paved the way for Shaz to look like a right improvement."

"Yeah alright. Can we have a moratorium on the Alex dresses like a tart jokes?" She took the bottle off him. "You Northerners and your prejudices. I'll bet no one but Annie Cartwright would be good enough for any of you." She caught him staring again. "Don't let me keep you then."

"Don't get **put out**." Gene took the bottle from her hands, kept her hand. "I ain't messing about anymore. I..." he exhaled loudly. "I am so cold right now and I don't to know what to think after that Mantle bastard told me that people in the Met are out to get me..."

Alex was looking down at her hand in his, embarrassed again, and it suddenly just seemed to spark a bravado in him. He pushed her gently through the door into the caravan and shut the door behind them and their breath was visible in the tiny cabin.

"Oh fuck me." It was so cold and dark, but the look on his face said he wouldn't let her keep her clothes on for anything. She looked at him for a long second and then walked into his arms, reaching up to kiss him, her lips cold and plump on his and he closed his eyes, and lifted her up. Her arms, her legs, wrapped around him and she could feel his erection through his trousers. She was laughing as they fell back onto the hard cushions of the sofa bed and the caravan lurched a little.

The light flickered off and he ignored it as he sought her cooperation in lifting her top away. He blew on his fingers and undid her jeans, but he let her keep them on and pulled her on top of him on the sofa. They kissed, quite roughly as if he wanted to assert that this was no joke, though she squeaked at the caravan leaning again and felt giddy at the absurdity of it. Ohh … his hands dug inside her jeans, caressing her arse. His hand slipped under her knickers so she closed her eyes and breathed into his neck, curling her arm around his shoulders.

Outside Mr Skelton began a polite argument with the camper who had been complaining about the lack of hot water. Their voices came closer and she drew back a little, but he was staring deeply into her eyes, unmoved, breathing heavily, unhooking her bra, although the conversation was very distinct now, and he bent to kiss her breasts as Mr Skelton explained how the nozzle on the shower-head worked.

His other hand moved back to the inside of her jeans. He went slowly. It wasn't that he was smiling but she could see the enjoyment at the edges of his mouth as she squirmed and stifled that giggle now. His eyes were so watchful – looking for signs.

Alex stopped his hand and pushed back a little to help him take his jacket off. She drew his shirt off – he'd showered and he smelled like soap … just soap. His hair, as she reached out a finger to flick a strand from his eyes, had that dirty feel that she secretly loved, and his face as close to a look of uncertain joy as she fumbled with the buckle of his belt and her hand reached down beneath the elastic of his boxers.

"I'll try the tub again. I'm sure there's no bloody blockage!"

Gene rose, supporting her and lurched them away from Mr Skelton's voice and over to the bed, groaning as they fell down onto an icy blanket. She was bout to laugh again but he put his hand over her mouth. "Shhhh."

She scooted over in the tiny bed to make room for him. "Don't be so mad at me, Gene." She drew him down with her under the blankets and put her arms around his narrow hips. The blankets were as cold from the inside as the top and they paused as a flashlight shone through the window above Alex's head.

One hand stroked his leg as Mr Skelton could be heard trudging back towards the campers' toilet blocks to address the new complaints with the showers.

"I'm not mad. God, just keep your hand down there." And now he hooked his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

_**VII**_

Squinting, Hunt leaned across to draw the curtain back on a brilliantly fine winter morning. The grassy field between the caravan sites remained frozen and empty. No one stirred and he glanced at his watch. 8.10. And he'd been dying for a piss for an hour except she lay across half his body, her head against his chin, a careless arm thrown up around his shoulder.

Dying for a piss and a cigarette too now he thought about it. But he had lain still all that time, eyebrow raised as his cock pressed against the front of his boxers. She'd let him keep the boxers on this time, and his singlet too. Why?

Probably because this tacky caravan demanded nothing less. So why not let him crawl all over her in his kecks? Why not? He hadn't minded at the time, but it irked him now to wonder if she had just been fulfilling some 'shag the lower classes' fantasy, the opposite of pinging a Thatcherite's red braces.

She'd certainly enjoyed herself, teasing him from under the covers and shrieking as the caravan shuddered, threatening to come off the blocks holding it up on the slushy field. And she'd shivered, demanding he run out into the darkness to fetch the second hip flask from his car. He'd done it too, streaking drunkenly across the lawn in his underwear, diving onto the grass as a shadow flitted behind the curtains of the Skeltons' living room window.

"My hero," Alex had murmured as he flung open the door again, hair splayed around his face. And he'd lurched across the room to the bed, gasping in the icy air. "Give me that bottle." He'd let her order him about that one time, admitting that in the immediate aftermath of having fucked her, he was in her power. Just for an hour or two.

He looked down at his boxers again now as he remembered lifting the bed covers and crawling towards her under them, pinning her down as she reached for the hip flask, and he held it over her head teasingly. _Give me a kiss first..._

Now she stirred, registering the weak sun on one side of her face and the burning discomfort on the other where her cheek lay against his chest. He could tell she was re-examining this dismal little space in the light of morning, and thinking, had they actually spent the night here?

He was trying to keep his breaths even, but she'd noticed his hard-on under the covers. Then she pulled the one sheet up over her breasts.

"Why didn't you pull rank on Chris and make him sleep out here?" she asked finally.

"Cos I wanted to do this to you and I didn't want the Skeltons listening at the door."

"Confident, weren't we?" _But you're still lying in my arms here._ "Well, would you mind getting me a cup of tea?"

Gene reached across her for the packet of fags lying on the window sill. "What would you do for a cup of tea then?" And he didn't light a cigarette, but suppressed a smile. "The going rate for being your errand boy, if I recall correctly from three hours ago, is..."

"I just want a cup of tea, Hunt."

Those curls falling about her face. The ridiculous part of him wanted to pull them back from her eyes; the flinty part told her to get her own cup of tea, and him one too while she was about it. _Sour little morning person.

* * *

_

"I don't want to go back into their house," she said, hugging her knees under the covers. "They're mean."

She suppressed her own smile as he mumbled a curse on her, but swung his legs onto the floor all the same, fag stuck in the corner of his mouth as he pulled on his trousers, socks, boots and shirt. Dressed slowly, and she watched him in fascination. Didn't know why it was interesting.

Just in this silence, she liked how he stood up and buckled his belt, tall and slim and crisp looking as he buttoned the white shirt and pulled on the dark jacket.

Hunt caught her watching him and the intensity of her gaze puzzled him. He put it out of his mind as he stepped down into the grass, and lit up the cigarette finally.

* * *

"Did you ask Chris if he wants a ride back us?" she asked after thanking him for the cup of tea. Hunt handed it over, saucer and all, and a slightly tea-sodden pink wafer too.

"So's Chris can also get caught up in this daft business too? Why would I do that?" He ran his hand through his hair, eyes darting back and forth as she sipped the tea and the sheet fell away to reveal that she'd put her bra and knickers on in his absence.

He felt sick at their predicament, but at the same time he was determined to ignore this continuing skittishness between them. It wasn't that he was nervous _(I've bent her over, chrissake)_, but every time he thought about what they'd done... He'd spent part of that first hour awake methodically planning quite a tour itinerary between here and London. It involved a slightly better class of accommodation, more alcohol and her knickers hanging off the door knob.

Chris. She was talking about ruddy Chris again. "He's headed back tomorrow anyway, and he'll have to get the bus or the train."

Rubbish. He thought about throwing her back onto the bed, but fuck it, she was acting all brisk again as she plunked down the tea cup and scrambled around on the floor for her clothes.

"I can't believe I am having a conversation about this." Hunt sank into the bed. "If I suggest it, Mrs Skelton will instantly picture you deflowering her son before we hit Manchester." Hunt caught at her arm casually as she swayed before him to pull her jeans back on. "And all the time you were deflowering me instead."

She rewarded him with a snort and pulled her top over her head. _I wish you'd do it again_, he thought.

* * *

"Guv, there's men hanging around your car!" Chris tripped on a pot-hole in the lawn as he ran towards the caravan. Hunt dropped his burned-off fag onto the grass. He'd just left to give Drake some privacy in getting dressed. All the intimacy, the whispers, the stifled cries had dissipated in the morning air.

"What are they doing, Guv? They been hanging around for five minutes, two blokes and they wouldn't say who they were." Chris was panting from the thirty second sprint in his tight jeans.

"They're still here?" Hunt asked, loosening his tie. The morning was fine, but so cold his breathing felt constricted. "Right, I'm sick of this. Wait here, Chris." Without a rap on the door he barged up the steps and into the small cabin. "Where's those files, Alex? Actaeon, where is it?" She didn't answer and he swore and whirled around on his heels.

"Hunt."

"No, it's gone beyond a fucking joke. I'm going to hand both those files over and say I'm sorry for being a naughty boy. They can have the stupid gobble-de-gook back." He banged the door shut on Chris, who had advanced up the steps. Both he and Alex lunged in this tiny space for the table in the far corner where her bag lay.

"No, you can't. It's too late anyway." Alex couldn't convince him and he pried her hands away, silently, so determined that his fingers dug into her hands before she backed off.

"Here you fucking go!" Hunt waved the files at the two men who had rapidly stepped back from the Quattro at the sight of him. "Don't be shy. You want this? Well you can bloody have it, doesn't mean anything to me."

The men were still at some distance, indistinct grey men who didn't make eye contact with him as he rounded the side of the Skeltons' house and advanced down the drive towards them. His voice was harsh and biting, and he swore as the men climbed quickly into their car and backed down the winding drive to the road.

Only a string of swear words as the sound of the car disappeared.

* * *

"You've got ten seconds," he said, revving the Quattro's engine as she opened the passenger door. "I'm not letting those bastards get away. I'm going to finish this now this morning." He was slowly backing the car out even as she threw the suitcase in the boot and climbed into the passenger seat.

Chris yelled to them, but Hunt waved him off. "For your own fucking good, Christopher. Take the bus back to London."

His mouth was set, furious, as he contemplated which way to turn out of the drive. To the left and back towards the main road and London.

"We go up North and now we can't come back? We steal some files for shits and giggles and now we can't give them back?" He was hardly watching the road. "I am going to forget what that insane bastard Matthew Mantle told us and so will you."

"How? They wouldn't take the files from you, Gene. They won't let you."

He didn't reply for a full minute and they coursed drunkenly out onto the main road, avoiding a van full of teenagers crawling past the intersection.

"I am going to ram the files down their throats," he said quietly after ten minutes of volleying down winding roads. They'd left any traffic behind.

Except for two cars ahead. Parked two hundred metres off down a straight section in the road – at angles to block both lanes. The men who had fled not half an hour before, and some more. A bead of perspiration sat on Hunt's lip as he slowed gradually, stopped the car and waited. No cars caught up to them – thick hedges on either side of the road obscured the surrounding fields and farm houses.

They waited while the men talked to each other and then one began to approach the car. Like a police officer, he leaned through Hunt's open window, taking in Alex and Hunt at the same time, looking for a gun, looking for the files.

The man had a cold – he raised his hand to wipe his nose, and then he fell forward, smacking into the door. And slid down to reveal Mantle putting down a shovel. Thwack! Mantle delivered another blow to the man's back and pushed him away from the car door.

He wrenched the door open and pulled Hunt out – flung himself into the back seat and yelled at Hunt to drive. Hunt obeyed him, reversing crazily with his door still open until they faced the oncoming van of teens and veered off the road to avoid them.

"Take the next right," Mantle said, leaning forward into the space between the two front seats. "Don't look back. They won't follow you now." He peered around so he could see Alex. "Just in time."

* * *

_I can't believe I am back in this hole_, Alex thought as she bought Hunt and Mantle teas and slices of Dundee cake from the Patty-cake tea shop in Manchester. _I'm paying again and Hunt's in a foul mood again. How circular. _Only Mantle and Hunt were bickering quietly in the corner table – as far from the windows as possible. It was bad enough that the Quattro was such a conspicuous car – now as she reached into her jean pockets for change to pay, the bickering grew louder.

"God's sake. Now this café knows about Actaeon as well." She put the tray of teas down carelessly.

"I saved your lives."

"You smacked a man over the head with a shovel!" Hunt turned away from the table in disgust. "I just wanted to hand the fucking files back so we can end this nonsense."

"Those files are the only bargaining chips you have," Mantle said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "You hand them over and they won't take long to kill you." His intensity had drawn Alex in, and although Hunt was looking away, he was listening.

"If you had just found Artemis they might have let you live."

"Why? We stole it from Edgehampton and we could have decoded it for all they know," Alex said.

"Artemis is nothing," Mantle replied to her, triumphant. And Mantle even had Hunt watching him now. "Artemis is a trap, a myth that MI5 put about to draw out all the subversive groups and people who might want to bring down the government's nuclear research. Look at the pages – rows of numbers and you'll never decode it because it doesn't mean anything."

All around them the ordinary sounds of clinking crockery and the radio's buzz about a doll show on this Saturday at the Salford community youth hall.

"Everyone who heard about Artemis or tried to break into Edgehampton or bribe an employee, everyone who tried to go public about Edgehampton like the Prices, Russell Conning… they all ended up dead. All those people you investigated, Hunt. They died because they fell into a trap."

"I don't understand," Hunt said, still angry. "So the government's not doing secret squirrel hush-hush nuclear research?"

"Of course they are, but all those fools who thought they could get hold of Artemis and find out all about it were deluded." Mantle took a big sip of his tea. How many times had he practiced this big reveal? "Your problem is not that you strolled into Edgehampton like all the others, but that you got hold of the really dangerous file. Actaeon." He watched Alex carefully. "I gave that file to the Prices shortly before their deaths. I knew it was a risk, and I told them to hide it well. I guess not well enough since you found it."

Actaeon … Actaeon. She remembered her visit to the library and the myth of Artemis and Actaeon, the hunter killed by his own dogs after he stumbled across the goddess bathing in the nude. As she thought, Mantle slid an envelope across the table to them. "This is the key to Actaeon and you can choose not to believe me, but you will believe me once you see the names in there and the nice tidy plans for how MI5 would arrange for their murders and make them look like nothing other than suicides or domestic incidents."

"Actaeon is the secret," she said, colouring at how slowly she said the words. "Actaeon. The hunter … killed by his own dogs."

Yes! Mantle was nodding enthusiastically. "Murder."

"My … the Prices were murdered. By who?"

"Read the file," and Mantle pressed the envelope into her hands. "Your names aren't in it of course, but you've triggered Actaeon now." Even the ridiculously dramatic flurry of words didn't make Hunt laugh. "They'll already be watching you, looking at you, seeing how they murder you and make it look like something else, just like the thing with the hunter and his dogs."

There was something so cunning, so lacking in sympathy, as Mantle let the idea sink in. "I guess the only question is: how will the frame your deaths?" He enjoyed watching the tiniest hint of doubt cross Hunt's face. "Will they make it look like you killed Alex in a fit of jealousy, or that she murdered you?"


	8. Chapter 8

**The lyrics to Super trouper belong to ABBA, not me.**

_**VIII**_

Hunt let out a long whistling sigh between his teeth as he pulled the rickety garage door closed on the Quattro.

"I never thought I'd see this," Alex shivered as she kicked the curb behind him.

"Me neither." He clicked the garage's padlock together. "It wouldn't be so bad if Phyllis's nephew Norman weren't such a complete twat. But he's the only one unemployed enough to have time to run the Quattro back to London next week." He walked away determinedly from down the street, away from the garage, from Phyllis's tidy red brick house, back towards Manchester's centre.

Alex almost looked guilty as she struggled to keep up, and he added, "We have bigger problems right now. I don't want to get pulled over by them spooky lot again before we at least get to London." His hands were in his pockets and after five minutes he slowed down to a stroll as if they were out on a wee jaunt at dusk through the streets. So quiet because everyone else was inside preparing for dinner.

"How are we going to get back, then?"

"We're taking the bloody bus." He'd decided an hour ago. The shock and anger at Mantle's words had been quickly replaced by the need to act. People out to kill him? Fuck them, fuck them, but he'd get back to London before they could catch up with him. Suddenly he wanted Ray beside him.

* * *

Alex had never been to Manchester before this week – she had no jolting present-day comparison to make. That was oddly calming as they turned corner after corner through the damp streets. The rain had come and gone in brief deafening waves, and now the night was falling quite slowly around them, a quiet deepening glower in the sky.

"We could just walk on and never go back," she mused. What about that? What would Hunt think of that? If they disappeared together from London, from Manchester? If they just kept walking off into this twilight without an idea of anything else? Strangely, she could almost picture it.

Gene turned his head, considering, or considering her rather. It was obvious - and it took her aback - that he couldn't picture it. "I'm going to take my station back. I'm going home and I'm going to get ready for when any bastard comes for me."

Alex nodded slowly, eyes wide as if these two sentences were the most inspiring pep talk she'd ever heard in her life. Yes. For better or worse, they were going back to London and they would face this. She had the code to Actaeon in her bag and the proof she needed.

_Don't blow out those candles, Molly._

* * *

She hadn't taken a bus for years. They both stooped, climbing up into the carriage of the evening service from Manchester through to London. The front seats were filled with older people, formally dressed and prepared to clutch their purses and shopping bags close throughout the trip. A class-full of teenagers clustered through the middle to back of the seats. Already the aisle was trashed with sweet wrappers and … she side-stepped a used condom.

"Here's your seat," a splotchy faced teen in a rugby league shirt offered Alex, all mock chivalry as he pushed his mate out into the aisle and kept his boot on his head. She stepped over him too and another scrum of boys, although there were no free pairs of seats.

Hunt leaned over the boy and girl huddled into the dark back seat corner. "Good evening." He used the words as if they should be enough for the teens to scramble away, but they just looked up sullenly from the comic they were sharing. The two had made a cosy nest already, with crisp packets and drinks stashed around them. "I have these seats reserved," Hunt continued.

"There's no reservations," the boy said.

"You're wrong, son." Hunt jerked him out by the collar. "You too, teen pregnancy." He didn't have to manhandle them any further and they were so quick they left the snacks and the comic.

Alex slid into the window-seat and he sat down heavily beside her, facing down the aisle like a guard dog to ward off anyone else who fancied riding in the back seat. Glanced through the comic and threw it away. "Filth," and closed his eyes.

She waited until his breathing deepened, listening to his quiet sighs as he settled a leg up on the row of seats and turned his head away from her. She thought about loosening his tie for him – it couldn't be comfortable – but she didn't want to wake him and every touch between them felt like an electric current. Led to another touch.

She pulled the code and the Actaeon folder out of her bag carefully and a pen.

"Ma'am!" Chris's head popped over the top of the seats in front of them and she jumped.

"Chris! Good god!"

"What a coincidence eh?" He wore his delight openly, shifting his voice to a theatrical whisper when she pointed to the sleeping Hunt. "What happened to the Quattro? Never thought the Guv would be caught dead taking a bus."

"Caught dead … yeah."

Chris looked around as the engine spluttered into activity and a collective scream went through the bus. "About time – this bus is already fifteen minutes later and Mum and Dad wanted to get home in time for Police 5." Alex turned slowly to the window and the terrified faces of Morna and Don Skelton as she waved to them.

The bus was pulling away as Chris passed over a heavy cake-tin of home-made biscuits, coconut ice and fudge.

* * *

The dream had him in a clinging cold grip and it took him a full ten seconds of staring absently into her face before he registered it all – the bus, the dark, the occasional shriek as one girl accused another of liking a boy. Alex had been tugging on his sleeve and poking his arm and in his dream it had seemed like a tormenter punching him into submission.

"Hunt!" The insistence of a shout, but whispered and she pointed to the seat in front. Hunt leaned around and saw a snoring Chris sprawled with knees jammed up against the wide windows.

"Well?"

"Gene, I've gone through the entire file. It has all these names. Dozens of them." She handed him a notepad and yes, there were row after row after names with symbols next to some. What did the symbols mean?

"There's those two women who drowned in the Thames, and Anna Vavasour's name," she pointed out, flipping through the pad. "There's three asterisk symbols next to Anna Vavasour, and if you go on further there..." She struggled to find the right page and he shifted his gaze from the pad to her mouth, with her tongue poking out just a little in concentration. "There! Vicky and Russell Conning, and there. And below them is the name Amanda Hook with asterisks next to her name."

Hunt hadn't really told her much about the details of the Conning case and now he didn't have to. Presumably the asterisks represented Amanda Hook's part in setting up and helping to murder the Connings. The asterisks had earned her a fake passport and new life in Spain, Portugal, Brazil. Somewhere in the sun to bring up her new baby. And Anna Vavasour too. She had left the country within a year of the women's drownings. "So there's no typed notes that state how all these people are supposed to be killed." He took the pad off her. "Just names and nice little symbols. Yeah, that'll hold up if we try to blow this whistle on this. The asterisks could mean they like their eggs sunny side up."

He stopped suddenly.

There at the top of the final page were the Prices' names. And beside them the name of Evan White with three asterisks beside it.

* * *

He knew Paulson was working late because he had passed by his office only minutes before and seen the lights and heard the sounds of Richard Strauss. Vanderzee tried the extension again, cursing the Chief Super in his head until the phone clicked and Paulson answered. Yes, still playing Strauss on that ludicrously expensive record player he kept in his offices.

"Paulson, I suppose you already arranged for Detective Inspector Drake's personal things to be sent to her from Forensics."

"Oh yes, sir. Poor old Justin Marbury was still a bit anxious this afternoon that she might turn up tomorrow. You know how uncomfortable that rum lot are over there. Hate confrontations. No I wrote a note with the things to inform DI Drake that she can consider herself on special leave for the foreseeable-"

"Yes, well I've had another thought about that." Vanderzee spent many hours staring at the framed photograph of his wife and children when he was on the phone. It helped him to concentrate. "It's a waste to have Drake on leave when we're so short of people here, and Lucas was telling me there's a backload of cases downstairs."

"Sir?"

He sipped the last of the Islay malt and shook the ice in the glass. One of a set of glasses given to him by the Commissioner when he assumed this role. "I need you to inform DI Drake that she will be resuming her duties at CID this week."

"Sir-"

"It's a practical decision and a sensible one now that all that stupid business with the personal relationship thing is cleared up." He knew fully well that Paulson had heard the rumours about Drake and Hunt being up in Lancashire together.

"Yes, sir."

"Great." Vanderzee hung up – in the framed photo he could see himself in the glass frame's reflection, the ghost father, unsmiling just like his wife.

* * *

They said nothing about those asterisks – those three neat little symbols next to Evan's name. Hunt had heard Chris stirring and a minute later the cake tin was thrust into his chest. Chris had eaten all but one of the pieces of coconut ice of course, little twat.

She was staring out the window. Hunt couldn't really imagine what her emotions were either. He'd never understand that thing between her and White, the eagerness she'd shown towards him, tripping over herself in a way he'd never seen from her. Had never seen towards himself anyway. But then, as far as he knew, she hadn't spoken to White since the death of the Prices in that … that what? It must be going through her head too. Tim Price had set up the bomb, arranged for Arthur Layton's bail from the Scrubs and then calmly ushered his wife and daughter towards their deaths.

What did the asterisks mean? Is that what was she was thinking about?

* * *

A kid skated down the aisle over the slippery wrappings as the bus pulled into a station just outside Stafford. Alex looked out across the motorway onto a field where show jumping obstacles had been set up. She briefly imagined little girls and their ponies, their parents standing around the bleak midday. But now among the barrels and poles she saw that clown pacing carefully. And the clown turned towards her and stood still for quite a few minutes.

The kid had successfully begged the driver to play his greatest hits tape over the speaker system, although so far the driver had favoured Tom Jones played at a whispering volume.

The first sounds stirred the little fuckers from their collective stupor.

_Super trouper, lights are gonna find me_

_Shining like the sun, smiling, having fun_

_Feeling like a number one._

"Now I really **am** in hell," Hunt said and she turned away from the window, and this time it was as if he'd returned her from a terrible dream. He glared at Chris as he popped his head over the top of the seats again. "Christopher, shouldn't you be in a diabetic coma by now? Eat the rest of that fudge, and let me get some sleep."

The bus pulled away onto the motorway again. She saw him try to say something to her, but the song was too loud for a whispered conversation.

_Tonight the Super trouper beams are gonna blind me _

_but I won't feel blue, like I always do, _

_cos somewhere in the crowd there's you._

Hunt leaned in close, crowding half onto her seat. She'd huddled herself into the very corner of the bus and drawn a curtain over the window and now she watched him carefully. Her knees were drawn up in front of her and he put a hand moving to her arm, steadying himself with the other hand on the seat over her head. A few months ago she would have laughed at him getting this close, but tonight when all she could think about were the asterisks next to Evan's name, she just shivered a little because he was so hesitating so long in kissing her.

* * *

Luigi held the door open for them and they both passed through the restaurant without a word or look. And he watched them up the stairs too, knew something had changed between them, although of course that was obvious. Ray had spent an entire drunken night at the bar three days ago, pointing his cigarette at Luigi, and uttering barely coherent warnings about the trouble she'd bring.

That afternoon, Luigi had accepted a cardboard box and a letter and put them outside her door. And then that night one of the high-up policemen had come across the road, demanded the letter back and replaced it with another.

Well. Luigi now locked the doors. So Hunt had grown those _coglione_ after all. And wouldn't it of course end badly some time after now? He had seen enough of both Drake and signore to know that.

* * *

"It's amazing how much crap you can amass in just a couple of weeks at a job," Alex murmured, tossing down the cardboard box onto her couch. Truth was, she could have fallen asleep on the floor here, but she wasn't sure she wanted Hunt to leave. Instead she poured him a drink of wine and left the lights off.

"Aren't you going to read that letter?" He handed it to her and she laughed at the beautiful handwriting on the envelope. "Getting fired again never looked so elegant."

"Well..." He drained the glass and poured another although it was red wine and too cold. "I doubt I'll get a lovely letter when I get the arse from the station."

"Oh Hunt. What are they going to fire you for? Nothing, you're fine."

"I'm going in there tomorrow. I'm taking my station back." He had that heroic look although his eyes were watered and weak a little, red from exhaustion. _I can almost here the soundtrack swell_, she thought. "I am going it figure out."

"We have, Gene."

She leaned against one end of her kitchen bench, and he the other. "No. There are crooked bastards in the Met involved in this and they need sorting."

"There are crooked bastards everywhere." She was thinking of that call Layton had made to his cell phone as he'd pushed her across the jetty, his gun at her head. _A piece of your past. _He'd told the caller she was the piece of their past, and what had the caller done? She couldn't now recall.

_A piece of your past. _And she'd so confidently informed Evan about the piece of his past as they sat in Hunt's office after the car bomb and watched Tim Price's video suicide note.

_Wrong_. It was all so wrong.

Hunt reached for her hand and pulled her gently into the living room. He kicked the cardboard box across the floor and they sat down heavily together. He couldn't be gentle exactly, but he could sit in the dark here with her, sipping his drink, approving as she drank hers.

"We should stay apart of course," Alex finally said, and perversely she came and sat right next to him, her head on his shoulder. "If this whole thing is true and we are being framed up for some kind of murder, then we should stay away from each other."

"Yes." Maybe he was feeling a bit too comfortable now. "Of course, though, you know..." He held his breath, but then he said it. "You'd kill me obviously."

Silence, then she put down her glass in mid-swig, incredulous. "How do you figure that exactly?"

"Ahh … well you've got form for it."

Alex pushed herself against his chest as she turned to face him. "Oh, I'm a nutter and I want to kill you in a jealous rage?" She coloured even more as she recalled the CID rumours about the desperate, unrequited love for him that had seen her transferred out in the first place. Still. "Is that really likely? You know – looking at you and looking at me."

"Oh." He drained another glass. "Because if you were a prostitute, I could never afford you, right? Well..." It really didn't need saying, and he had the sense, finally, not to. "Who kidnapped who and took them up North?"

Hunt barely had time to pick his coat up off the kitchen bench before she drove him out into the hall outside her door. "Come on," he said, but she was turning the locks on the door and drove the bolt home.

He made his way slowly down the stairs, anticipating a recall, but by this time Alex had torn open the envelope from CS Anthony Paulson and was reading about how he looked forward to welcoming her back to her former position in Hunt's team.

**the end **

**The last story in this series is Apricity :)  
**


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